I was paying no attention to New Year's because I'm on the west coast and it's not here for another three hours. But the kids had CNN on. The big ball drop in New York. Some guy singing New York, New York, and then someone else singing America The Beautiful and goddamned if it didn't get to me.

2008 was great for me, personally, and for my family. I don't know that many other people share that sentiment. I think 2008 rattled a lot of people. But either way, 2009 is going to be a good year. That's right: fuck the irony Gods, I'm predicting that 2009 will be a great year.

A year from now we'll laugh at the people predicting the demise of America.

I'm toying with an idea that I haven't thought through completely. (Which differentiates it from my usual ideas how, exactly?)

The idea is this: abandon privacy.

Transparency. Not just in business, but in life. No more pretense, no more phony degrees or invented relationships, no more efforts to keep our online identities secret, no more denial of peccadilloes, or misbehaviors or weirdnesses.

If it was all out there, for everyone. Would anyone care that you like MILF porn? Or that you collect Barbie dolls? Or that you go through three times the average amount of toilet paper?

Everyone has something to hide. But they only have to hide it because revealing it would place them at a disadvantage. If you happen to enjoy wearing opposite gender clothing you don't necessarly want that fact coming up during a job interview. Unless. Unless you know the guy conducting the interview likes wearing diapers. In fact is wearing them right now.

Openness obliterates the power of shame. At least shame over minor lifestyle differences. I kind of think people might still frown on murder. But generally when we're hiding something it's something stupid. And the only way it hurts us is if we swim in a milieu of hypocrites who conceal their own kinks.

We all hide who and what we are because everyone else does the same. It's an arms race of phoniness. Look, I know you didn't have sushi for lunch, you had a sticky bun with extra icing. So what? I had three bong hits and a box of Entenman's donuts.

While it has seemed an impossible goal for nearly 100 years, scientists now believe that they are on brink of cracking one of the biggest problems in physics by harnessing the power of nuclear fusion, the reaction that burns at the heart of the sun.

In the spring, a team will begin attempts to ignite a tiny man-made star inside a laboratory and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.

No word on whether scientists will graft mechanical octopus arms to their backs. But I don't really see how they can avoid it.